The Drowned Court and the Sea-Deep Pact

When the kingdoms of the drowned world stood on the brink of annihilation, the four noble houses of the Drowned Court enacted a final, desperate rite: the Sea-Deep Pact. In secret, each house offered up its queen - matriarchs of power, lineage, and pride - binding their souls into a singular stone reliquary carved with runes of old faiths.

They sailed this reliquary to the deepest trench - where the ley lines of the old gods crossed in churning silence - and cast it into the abyss, believing the sacrifice would earn the sea’s favour and protect their crumbling realms.

But the sea is not a god. It does not grant salvation. It changes. It consumes.

Instead of mercy, the ocean gave them eternity: a cruel half-life bound to their withering bones, cursed to watch as their courts and citadels were swallowed by the tide. Their queens, however, did not die. In the crushing dark, beneath miles of black water, something awoke.

There, in the silence, the queens were remade - their souls fused into one impossible being of coral, bone, and wrath. An abomination. A deity of ruin and memory. A god-thing that remembers its pain.

Though the Drowned Court still searches for the lost reliquary - believing it to hold the remains of their salvation - they do not know that the reliquary has long since split open, and what it once held now walks the seafloor.

And deep in their dreaming, the Coralborn answer its call…